The Urban Pantheist

Photo by urbpan. Location: the Riverway, by Landmark Center, Boston.

Horse-chestnut Aesculus hippocastanum

This tiny sapling, given half a chance and few decades may end up dwarfing all the trees around it. Horse chestnut grows to 50 feet or more, but some specimens are known to double that. It is native to Europe, but its tolerance to urban environments made it popular in certain contexts elsewhere. The individual pictured appears to be a volunteer, perhaps planted with the help of a forgetful squirrel. It's quite conceivable that this tree had some other origin, as gray squirrels generally do not eat the fruit of the horse-chestnut tree (though fox squirrels seem to). The large nuts (not, incidentally, closely related to true chestnuts, and called "buckeyes" in the U.S. and "conkers" in the U.K.) are poisonous to most mammals, including humans and horses. The name may refer to the hardness of the fruit, or perhaps to a veterinary use for it. Deer can eat them safely. The nuts are packaged in baseball-sized spiked balls that can be dangerous weapons if they fall before they split open.

Several species of native North American buckeye trees grow across the middle portion of the continent, and have inspired a certain amount of regional pride. The uses of native buckeye fruit include a source of starch, after numerous changes of water, and as a poison, to stun and collect fish. Buckeyes are so-called because the fruit resembles the oval-pupiled eyeball of a deer.